Dyani looked over Nymin’s shoulder as she was carried away. Mana pulsed from the Evolved False Hydra like an erratic heartbeat, as a nova of orange light burst from the center of its body. Instead of merely gaining a layer of frost, the flesh it passed over froze solid, cracking from the sudden change in temperature.
Its heads screamed and flailed as steam poured out of their mouths, before the heat ejected from the hydra’s central body set them alight like a cluster of candles. A mix of frosty condensation and smoke filled the air, followed suddenly by a dense burst of experience. Dyani’s core filled to bursting without her even needing to draw it in, and she felt her mother doing the same.
“What did you do?” Nymin shouted in a sobbing laugh. Dyani was still awash with physical pain from her punctured and burned arm, spiritual pain from skill backlash, general shock, and utter relief, so she replied without much thought.
“I fucked them up.”
Nymin laughed again, this time with less sobbing. For once, she didn’t scold Dyani for swearing.
“Yes, Dyani, you did. Please, never do that again,” Nymin said, looking over her daughter’s state, “My goddess, your arm.”
Dyani winced. She’d been trying very hard not to think about that. Even with a heat resistance skill, her arm looked like a weekend roast someone forgot in the oven.
“It’s fine, mom. We can call Kemo, she’ll heal me up in no time.”
“Of course, acorn, of course.” Nymin landed below the rippling green mana node, looking up at it nervously, then down to the bottom of the chamber. “Pikawon’s on his way and he doesn’t look happy.”
Dyani chuckled, wincing as her burned skin that still had working nerves flared with pain.
“Hydra probably tastes awful.”
Nymin gave her a confused look, before she remembered Pikawon’s talent, then she chuckled as well.
“You’re probably right.”
They rested together until Pikawon pulled himself up and over the edge.
“No…more…climbing,” he gasped out between heavy breaths.
Nymin’s brow creased in concern, but Dyani only laughed. She could tell he was only whinging.
“Nice of you to join us, but you’re a little late. I’ve already slain the foul beast.” She gestured towards the corpse, a frozen hunk of meat covered in lumpy, burned out protrusions, no longer recognizable as anything that had once been alive.
Pikawon mock glared up at her, but she could see the tension visibly leaking from his body.
It was over, and the three of them were still alive.
Just as she was congratulating herself on a job well done, Nymin lurched back, pulled by the translucent copper gauntlet on her arm.
“Mom?” Dyani reached out, but Nymin held up an open hand.
“It’s alright, acorn. You’re going to be alright.” There was another tug, another step backward.
Nymin looked between Dyani and Pikawon with so much love and sadness that Dyani couldn’t speak.
Without moving her head, Nymin looked pointedly up at the mana node, which had gone from gently rippling to shuddering and distorting like a turbulent sea.
“Take care of each other.”
Ignoring Nymin’s gestures, Dyani lunged for her mother, but Nymin floated up and back of her own accord, out of reach. Dyani braced her legs to jump after her, but Pikawon grabbed her shoulder.
“Don’t,” he said, voice deadly serious.
“She’s my mom!”
“Unless you’ve been hiding a skill that can break magical tethers, you can’t help. You’ll just get caught along with her.”
Dyani didn’t want to accept it, but she didn’t have a skill like that, or any idea how to build one. She didn’t even have the mana to fuel her own skills, and the mana potion had worn off minutes ago.
She felt like she should cry, but with everything that had just happened, her system was in too much shock to make it happen.
It took Pikawon painfully squeezing her shoulder for her to realize that the turbulence around her was more than a reflection of her emotions.
“I think it’s time to go,” he said, looking up at the mana node, which had begun drawing in the ambient mana like a hungry maw. “How are we supposed to do this again? Do we just jump through?”
His words barely made sense to Dyani as she looked up at her mother’s retreating form. Nymin smiled and nodded, giving Dyani permission to leave her behind.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Dyani looked back at the mana node.
* Untethered Proto-Mana Node (Collapsing)
* Level: 3
* Affinity: Decay
* Description: A proto-mana node that has been destabilized, due to losing its anchor to the physical world. This node will consume surrounding mana and matter before fully collapsing, unless re-anchored or stabilized by external means. Any further disruption will increase its rate of destabilization and consumption.
She could already feel the node’s pull, on her body as well as her mana. Her clothes and hair fluttered in the sucking wind. Bits of ash, frozen monster, and wooded splinters were already being sucked inside.
According to Nymin, this was their exit, but jumping into a sphere of raging mana that looked to be annihilating everything it touched didn’t feel like a good idea.
She’d be willing to overlook her instinctive fear if Nymin was coming with her, but she was getting pulled further away with every second.
Dyani made a choice. She wasn’t leaving her mother behind, not to be the tool of some power-hungry aristocrat.
Shielding her face from the wind and debris, she stumbled over to a narrow root branching off from the larger root they stood on and warped her arms and legs around it.
Pikawon followed her, yelling words she could no longer hear, and gesturing, towards the node that represented their chance to escape. He looked upward with obvious longing, but still took a position beside her, anchoring himself with his claws.
The node’s gravitational pull was only getting stronger. If it kept escalating, they’d be sucked inside, despite their attempts to hold on. She remembered from her father’s stories that slayers used some kind of tool to seal collapsing nodes, so she knew it was possible, though she had no idea how something like that worked.
Dyani reached out with her spiritual senses, feeling for the node, like it was one of her skills. She could feel something of its structure, but it was distant and faint.
It was nothing like a skill, though it was equally complex. She couldn’t make out any details, but she got the distinct feeling that it was unbalanced and that the mana and matter it was pulling it was a poor substitute to what it truly wanted.
Pikawon was shouting something over the rising scream of wind, but Dyani couldn’t pay attention to both the words and her growing connection to the node, so she ignored him.
The mana node had given mana freely, in the form of ambient mana and monsters, in exchange for...something, something it hadn’t received. And now that it was collapsing, it was trying to collect. Except it couldn’t find what it wanted, so it was just taking what it could get, like a lender repossessing your home when you failed to pay off a debt.
Just maybe, if she could give the node what it really wanted, it would stop trying to eat them.
A part of Dyani knew she was dissociating, using the node as a distraction from today’s trauma, but she ignored that voice in favor of another. The collapsing node might not be as dangerous as a stable one, pumping out chaotic mana and monsters, but it was still a risk.
Who knew how much it would consume before it was satiated? Would it damage the Mountain Oak’s roots, break through the roof of this chamber and start sucking down homes and business, with the people still inside?
What was the point of saving people from monsters, just to let them die from something else? This wasn’t just about staying with her mom, sealing this node was the right thing to do.
To her right, she saw an ascending stream of sewage, being sucked upward and away.
Dyani could feel something inside her spirit resonate with the node’s desire. It was buried so deep that she couldn’t properly identify it, let alone untangle and extract it, not without a tool for the job.
She brushed against the skill slot that had once held Feverchill Bloom, which was not in good shape. Not only was its energy expended and only partially recharged, the slot itself had taken damage from the backlash of the overcharged attack.
In some ways, that made it the perfect choice. It was a cracked cup, slowly being refilled.
When she’d started out creating skills, she couldn’t do anything with a skill slot until its internal energy recharged, but she had more experience now.
Using the small amount of energy the slot had regained, she created a mana conduit and poked it through one of the cracks in the side. Dyani lost much of her control over the line of mana once it left the skill slot, but she could still easily extend it down deeper into her spirit. Once it was right beside the unidentified energy, she connected the conduit to the skill slot’s output, without any valves, gates, or other components to interrupt the connection.
It was less of a skill, more a pipeline from the center of her spirit straight to the outside.
If she was in a better state of mind, she would’ve realized how bad of an idea that was. It was the spiritual equivalent of cracking open your ribcage and exposing your heart.
Even ignorant of the details, Pikawon could sense something was wrong. His hands were busy holding him in place, so he leaned over and pushed his shoulder against hers, trying to snap her out of her fugue state.
But he wasn’t the only thing to take notice. The roar of wind quieted, and the stream of sewage splashed back down to the lake below.
With a surprisingly gentle touch, the node pulled at the connection Dyani had created within herself, drawing out the unknown energy like water from a deep well.
It leaked from her chest in a nearly invisible haze, before being drawn up and away.
At first it felt almost pleasant, like she was releasing an internal pressure she hadn’t noticed until it was gone, but the node wasn’t content with extracting the excess energy. It just kept pulling, deeper and deeper, tearing away the unknown energy from where it was integrated into the deepest parts of her soul.
Dyani only realized she was screaming when she ran out of breath. She tried to cut off the connection, but the very energy she’d foolishly offered up was continuously reinforcing and strengthening the link.
The icon in the corner of her vision pulsed and glowed, indicating incoming messages or other alerts.
A shuddering scream broke through her pain, fugue, and panic, but it didn’t come from her.
The resonance of Banshee’s Wail rolled over her, disrupting the flow of energy long enough for Dyani to tear the impromptu skill apart. She sucked in a gasp of air, looking for Nymin, but she didn’t manage to catch sight of her before the mana node shifted from sickly green to an impenetrable black that distorted and swallowed any nearby light.
With a level of force that made the earlier suction seem like a whisper, the node drew in everything, consuming mana, the hydra corpse, nearby roots, sewage, stone, and a pair of young people, holding on to each other for dear life.